Wednesday, February 26, 2014

WhatsApp to offer free Voice Calling later this year

In the midst of a legendary acquisition deal with Facebook, WhatsApp will start to allow Voice Calling (VOIP) later this year. In a move that will solidify the messaging giant as one of the most used platforms for mobile communications, Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO announced that they "want to make sure people always have the ability to stay in touch with their friends and loved ones really affordably."

WhatsApp Affordable, Indeed

As previously reported, WhatsApp maintains its No-Ad policy. With the staggering multi-Billion dollar buyout by Facebook (Most of which is Facebook Shares), WhatsApp will continue to offer its app free for download and usage for the first year, and only $1 each year from then on.

Billion Users, or More

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Koum has also made it very well known that even though they stand as the worlds most popular messaging service, that they still have lofty goals for user numbers. "We can only get our product to a billion or 2 billion users if we continue down the path we started on." he says. They have no plans to integrate the service with Facebook's already existing Messenger service.

Privacy Concerns

If successful in acquiring its goal number of users, WhatsApp would very quickly become possibly the worlds most popular mobile communications company. Not only does that have major ramifications for actual Cellular Communications Providers, but it would also raise many concerns that it would go down the same Privacy-Landmine track as its new-to-be parent company - but this is another worry quickly quelled by Koum, stating "We don't want to know your name or where you live," he goes on to say "There's no plans to change that."

WhatsApp maintains that it will operate entirely aside from Facebook, and not integrate its product within the existing structure of the company. For now at least. But as any good skeptic can agree - if it seems to be too good to be true, it probably is. We will just have to see if WhatsApp keeps its promises.